Pannenhalma, Hungary

On Tuesday Sarah and I decided to visit a really old abbey that is located just outside of Gyor in Pannenhalma. And boy was it an adventure! We set out for the bus station after school and tried to find the 1:43 bus to Pannenhalma. First we were at the wrong bus station. We couldn't really find Pannenhalma on any of the signs, so we asked someone who worked there where the bus was and they pointed to another bus station on the other side of the train tracks. So we hiked over the bridge to the other bus station. But there were a gazillion buses and we had no idea which was ours. We tried to ask some of the young people, hoping they would speak English. No luck. We asked a lady selling things at a little stand. No luck. We asked a few bus drivers. You guessed it. No luck! Everyone kept saying "elf." I know I'm not the tallest person in the world but Geez! We finally found the information window and managed to find out that we had just missed our bus and the next one didn't leave for another 50 minutes. So we hung out at the train station in Gyor and then hopped on bus number 11. I later found out that "elf" means 11 in German. If the bus had only been number 1-10 we would have been totally fine. But that's as far as my numerical knowledge of German stretches. So anyway, there we are on the bus on the way to Pannenhalma, and we weren't even sure if we were going to get there on time because the tours leave on the hour, the abbey closes at 4, and we were on the 2:46 bus. So we're riding along and we start to see the abbey up on the hill, but we weren't too sure where to get off. All the sudden it's the last stop and the bus driver is yelling something about heading back to Gyor. So we hop off and look up and the abbey is on the top of this huge hill which we are on the bottom of. But I wasn't about to give up at this point, so I just start hiking. Before we know it, we're hiking through people's backyards and driveways, hitting dead ends and having to try another way. As long as we were still going up I was convinced we were going to make it. Eventually we hit this little path. We booked it up the path and there it was! The abbey at Pannenhalma! We were wondering around trying to find the tourist office but no one that we asked spoke English. We were maybe getting a little flustered when I saw a group of people sitting around and just started with, "does anyone speak English?" Luckily one young man did and informed us that the ticket office was down the other side of the hill. This was not music to our ears since we had just hiked up the hill in record pace, but we were determined to see this abbey! So we hurried down the path and across a little bridge and found the ticket office. And much to our surprise and delight, we were able to get on a tour in ten minutes! In Hungarian... But no worries. They had pamphlets in English for us to use to follow along with the tour. We were pretty pumped that it all worked out.

The abbey was beautiful! It is high atop a hill, which we were well aware of, so it overlooks the city of Pannenhalma and has an amazing view. They abbey is actually over 1500 years old and still funtions! We even saw a couple of monks! The church was beautiful in the abbey, but the best part was the library! They have over 400,000 books! It's huge and beautiful and just makes me want to read! We even saw some really old documents written about the abbey. After the tour I bought some tea that is made by the monks by the herbs they grow in their garden right there at the abbey! How cool!

Sarah and I went wondering around the beautiful grounds and ended up at the front of the abbey just in time to see our bus pulling away. Yeah, we definitely missed it by about 20 seconds. We weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves, so we tried to ask a lady standing outside the abbey and she arranged for her friends to drive us down to the bus stop at the bottom of the hill where we could catch a bus back to Gyor. The Hungarian people are so helpful and nice! The lady who drove us even got out of the car to show us what time our bus would be arriving. And go figure, we had missed the last bus by about 2 minutes, so we had to wait about 45 til the next one. But that was fine. Sarah and I were just chatting away. And then a scary drunk Hungarian man stumbled over to the bus stop and tried to chat with us forever! He tried Hungarian, German, and even a little English before we finally just got up and walked around the area for awhile to lose him. I will say, though, that I am pretty impressed that a Hungarian drunk man could speak three languages. I'm pretty sure most drunk people in the states can't even manage their native English very well. Needless to say, Sarah and I were excited when the bus finally pulled up and we were safely on our way back to Gyor. It was a crazy day with yet another wild Hungarian adventure. :-)